The Earl of Liverpool: My Lords, the White Paper provides a rich seam of aims and aspirations for the provision of our future energy needs and is a catalyst for promoting a debate on the vital need for this country to develop a coherent low-carbon future. The Government deserve to be congratulated on that, and I join other noble Lords in congratulating the Minister on his maiden speech from the Dispatch Box. However, there are a number of technologies to which the Government have not given proper consideration; I shall come on to these a little later. I believe that we owe Al Gore a debt of gratitude for his efforts to alert the world to the absolute necessity to reduce our carbon emissions. His film, "An Inconvenient Truth", left me in no doubt that we need to act now. The fact that the public are increasingly coming to this view is encouraging.
	To those who say, "It's all very well reducing our carbon footprint, but what about China or India?", I say that we should lead by example. I know that this brings with it issues of competitiveness, but the importance of this issue is such that it transcends even those arguments. As the Minister said, energy saving is where our efforts should begin. That is why I am a little surprised that low-energy light bulbs still seem to cost 400 per cent more than conventional ones. I wonder whether the Government might investigate that. If the manufacturing process dictates such a high price, perhaps they could consider subsidising responsible companies and individuals who wish to make the changeover.
	The fact that 8 per cent of all our electricity consumption is used up by machines on standby is appalling. More emphasis needs to be given by manufacturers to cutting that out altogether, and any assistance that the Government can give in that regard will be welcome. The national grid is a wasteful way of distributing electricity, as the White Paper's executive summary acknowledges. Almost 65 per cent of energy is lost through inefficient generation, transmission and distribution. The provision of electricity generating plants, be they CHP, biomass, solar and so on, should be sited near conurbations, as the White Paper again acknowledges. That would greatly reduce wastage.
	I turn to three methods of electricity generation that have zero carbon emissions. The first is CSP, which stands for concentrating solar power. This is a mature and proven technology, which has been operating in California since 1985. A new plant went on stream in Spain two months ago and another one is planned for Sicily. CSP is the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat and using that heat to create steam, which then drives turbines and generators, just as a conventional power station does. Solar heat can also be stored in melted salts, enabling electricity to continue to be generated during the hours of darkness.
	I hear siren voices asking of what relevance that is to us, particularly given the summer that we are having, but it has great relevance because of the recent development of highly efficient transmission lines, called HVDC, which have transmission losses of only 3 per cent per 1,000 kilometres. That would mean that we could receive electricity from the Sahara Desert with only 10 per cent loss of power. The amazing thing is that, if a CSP farm measuring 80 square miles was established in the desert, it could produce enough electricity to satisfy the entire needs of the whole of Europe. The Germans were sufficiently interested to commission a report, the TRANS-CSP study, which estimated that electricity imported from north Africa and the Middle East could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity for European countries, allowing us to make deep cuts in CO2 emissions and negate the need for nuclear power. My question to the Minister is whether the Government have given proper consideration to this technology and whether there has been any exchange of views with the German Government.
	Secondly, I turn to tidal power. I understand that the Sustainable Development Commission is carrying out a study into the various ways of harnessing tidal power and that it will report in September this year. The report is eagerly awaited by those with an interest in this technology. I hope that proper and unbiased consideration will be given to tidal lagoons. These lagoons are offshore and actually encourage marine habitats; they do not cause silting problems, unlike the Severn barrage, which I do not advocate. Since becoming interested in tidal power, I have noticed that the Government are encouraging and indeed subsidising tidal stream technology and are inclined to support the Severn barrage, which will require public funding. However, there remains a distinct lack of support for lagoons.
	My second question to the Minister is why this is so. Tidal Electric, the company seeking to construct such a lagoon in Swansea Bay, is not seeking any public funding and the research shows that it would be three times cheaper to produce electricity from lagoons as opposed to tidal streams. This fact was confirmed in Ofgem's report in 2005. Interested investors have been impressed by the detailed analysis and costings carried out on behalf of the company by WS Atkins and AEA Technology plc, but when they approach the DTI they receive a negative response, which seems to be based on an incorrect assumption that construction costs will be as high as those for building the Severn barrage. The potential investors are well known businessmen who understand the risks involved, but the killer punch for them is finding that the DTI does not support the project.
	Surely every means of harnessing the power of our tides—we have the second highest tidal range in the world—should be given the chance to prove its capability. I find this negative attitude incomprehensible. I understand that the Minister has hardly had time to get his feet under his desk at DBERR and so an answer today is a big request, but I hope that he will be able to look at the matter and write to me in due course.
	Thirdly, and lastly, I would like to touch on matters nuclear. As I said when we debated the energy review report last year, I am against nuclear fission but strongly support nuclear fusion. As noble Lords will know, this type of nuclear power generation offers the potential to provide a major new source of energy using basic non-toxic fuels that are widely available, with no greenhouse gases or long-lived radioactive waste.
	The international fusion research programme, which we support, aims to build and demonstrate full-scale power generation in a prototype power plant within 30 to 35 years. If such a prototype is successful, we will have discovered the Holy Grail for our future energy needs. With this in mind, and given the other carbon-neutral schemes that I have mentioned, is it not a great mistake to embark on building more nuclear power stations remotely sited and therefore grid inefficient, which will be hugely costly to build and will leave a lethal legacy of toxic waste with a life of up to 500,000 years?
	We still have 2 million cubic metres of nuclear waste to deal with from our existing nuclear power stations. Although dealing with it in geological shafts may be a solution, I do not believe that we have yet arrived at a conclusion. Would it not be far better to try to speed up the nuclear fission research? Meeting the energy challenge provides us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to think outside the box, which I have tried to do today. I hope that when future generations look back on our efforts and our decisions we will not be found wanting.